A DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attack, disrupts the way websites work and effectively prevents users from accessing the site in question. In most cases, automated bots are used to 'flood the system'. By making numerous automated attempts to access a particular site, the DDoS attack causes the site or the servers to crash, thus rendering the site inaccessible.
Although a DDoS attack is a form of cyber attack, it doesn't usually pose any risk to users, even if they have data stored on the targeted website. In most cases, users are inconvenienced whilst the website is inaccessible but are not at risk of data loss or privacy breaches.
How can downtime be prevented?
Despite facing a DDoS attack recently, our data recovery systems and IT infrastructure enabled us to have the site up and running relatively quickly. This was particularly thanks to Cloudflare, who help us mitigate attacks, enabling us to get back online far more efficiently than if we weren't using them. Normally, Gazoop handles around 60,000 requests per hour and we deliver fleet dispatch solutions accordingly. During the unprecedented DDoS attack, however, our servers were faced with over 20 million requests per hour.
If you tried to access the site during this time and were surprised to find it was inaccessible, we apologise for the inconvenience and assure you that there is no reason to be concerned. Our comprehensive online security strategy ensured that no ongoing issues were caused by the attack.
Avoiding future DDoS attacks
When struck by a DDoS attack, some businesses and organisations are offline for days. Due to our commitment to online security and Cloudflare's help, however, we were able to have the site back online within a matter of hours.
Following this, we've addressed our existing security solutions to ensure that the chance of a future DDoS attack is reduced. Whilst the chance of a DDoS attack can never be excluded completely, we're confident that our systems are effectively protected, that our backup systems are fully-functional and that we're able to continue delivering top class fleet dispatch solutions.
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